


A Little Bit, Eventually

by iamalivenow



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: A little bit of fluff at the end, Angst, Eren is smart, Gen, I'm so sorry, Levi has issues, So much angst, this is how i show my love, tw: Obsession, tw:early depression, tw:grief, tw:slight selfharm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 18:35:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1097295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamalivenow/pseuds/iamalivenow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A week ago, Levi's world crashed down around him and he hasn't really been alright about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Bit, Eventually

**Author's Note:**

> Hello. I'm also sorry.  
> This is the first fic that I've written in four years, and it's not beta read or anything fancy like that. It sort of wrote its self, so i figured I would show it to you guys. I hope you enjoy it, or the crippling feels ( as my friend calls them.  
> Comments are appreciated.

It was a week ago. 

A week ago when Erwin walked into his office and told him. 

“Thank you. For telling me.” Levi says. Erwin nods.  
“You'll need sometime alone, I gather?”  
“....No. I'm Fine.” Erwin sighed and left the room. The door closed behind him. Levi just stared. He just stared at the spot where Erwin was for five hours, until his neck hurt, and his eyes stung and the sun set outside and turned to darkness. Levi just stared. 

And now? He just kept starring. The corporal’s response time was slower, he was colder. He didn't joke. Didn't have want to. His bad habit with the cleaning, that was getting worse too.  
“Are you alright?” Hange found him in the cafeteria. They got a rare shipment of fruit at the castle, and everyone was enjoying themselves. Levi thought his apple wasn't clean enough. That's what sparked it.  
“Fine.” He had been rubbing at one spot with his handkerchief for five minutes. The younger recruits, those bastards, were starring at him.  
“Are you=”  
“I'm really tired of that question.” He snapped back. The apple still wasn't clean enough. Hange got up with her food.  
“Come find me, if you need to talk.” She left to sit at a different table. Of course she would leave him. He scrubbed at his apple until the entire cafeteria was almost empty. Shit. 

Everyone seemed to acknowledge that Levi wasn't to be talked to for a while. And Levi was fine with it. He.... he didn't want to talk to anyone. He wanted to clean. So he cleaned. Everyone left him alone, except for the new recruits. They were to be replacements. They all wanted something from him, and the only thing he told them was to go clean.  
“You didn't do that corner well enough.”  
“You missed a spot.”  
“Get in between the tile.”  
“To dusty, do it again.”  
Apparently, this attitudes didn't serve those self reichous shits. He herd them over his scrubbing talking to Eren.  
“Corporal is just trying to work through something. Just clean like he says, and I'm sure everything will be fine.” Levi stopped what he was doing, and starred at the kid. 

Maybe Eren was right. If Levi just kept on cleaning everything would be fine. He wouldn't have to worry about it, and everything would be fine. He hasn't had a single mission for a week and a half now. If he could just go on a another mission, kill some titans, he could breathe normally again. He would just clean until he could prove to Erwin that he was fine. He would just clean until he could forget it. Shit. 

Eren watched him more vigilantly then anyone else did, and Levi considered asking him why, but that would require talking. Levi didn't walk to talk. Every night, at the same time he walked Eren down to his cell and every night Eren tried to talk to him. It was routine, and normal Levi would run at the first sight of it. New Levi was to tired to run. New Levi cleaned. Eren helped him clean, and didn't question him on it. Wether it was Eren's rampant hero worship, or that he didn't care, or some other reason, he didn't question it, just picked up the sponge and worked away at the corners. 

Levi had found that if he scrubbed his his arms really really hard he could make them hurt. Obviously, he knew thats what would happen, with the shitty soap, and the rough water, but it seemed like a revelation to New Levi, so he scrubbed. Holy shit, did he scrub. His hands soon cracked at the application, and a day or two afterwards, he had split the skin. He starred at his raw knuckles when the first drop of red bubbled up slowly. He starred at it as it dripped into the sink and washed away with the rest of the water. He starred at it for a while. Shit. 

He was walking Eren down to his cell when he asked him what was wrong with his hands. It didn't seem fair to Levi, the fact that Eren noticed. He thought that it was a special thing that was all on his own, this brat shouldn't notice something that was his. “It's nothing.”  
“It doesn't look like nothing.” The kid said.  
“It is.”  
“Are you sure?”  
“Eren.” Levi's voice cut through out the dank air of the dungeon.  
The brat didn't say anything afterwards. Levi locked him in his cell. He would be lying if he said he didn't walk away a bit faster then routine called him to.

Levi wasn't sure when he discovered the distinction between Regular Levi, and New Levi. Regular Levi was from before. Before when he could stop himself from rubbing holes into clothes because he noticed a smudge and before when he still laughed with his friends. New Levi lived for holes. He reveled in them. They were opportunity to dig out a stitching needle and fix the problem. They were opportunity for accidentally pricking himself and starring at the red. New Levi also didn't like laughing. He thought it was stupid. He was probably right. Shit. 

Eren was too quite the next day. Levi noticed that his footsteps sounded different. Maybe his shoes needed to be mended. He could fix them for him. Scald himself on the iron and wonder if the red would appear then. He asked, “Are your shoes okay?”  
“They're fine, why?”  
“You sound different.” Neither of them said anything until Levi was about to closed the cell door. Then Eren opened his mouth.  
“You need to talk.”  
“What?”  
“You need to talk about it. I don’t know why everyone thinks your going to get better with time. You're not. You're just going to dig yourself into a hole, and pull the rope down with you.” Levi stared at him.  
“What?” That was all he could say.  
“You need to talk about them.” Levi couldn't see straight.  
“You are talking to a superior-”  
“I'm talking to you as a friend right now. Levi, talk to someone.”  
“I don know what there is to talk about-.” Levi said very very carefully. He made a motion for the cell door once more and...

And then Eren Jeager said what no one had the gal to since the second Erwin walked out of his office almost two weeks ago. “Their dead, Levi.” 

What happened next was a flurry of movement, clanging noise, and a lot of confusion. The cell door was flung against the wall. The keys fell to the ground. All Levi could see was the red. And New Levi reveled in it. Regular Levi didn't like it. He wanted it gone. So he sought out the source. He didn't just tackled Eren, he floored him. The shifter was on the ground in a second flat, with Levi on top of him, his legs holding the younger's body in place. Then he started swinging. His right fist connected with Eren's ribs, and there was a loud thud. Levi's eft fist connected with Eren's face, and there was a delicious wet crack that echoed through the dank air. “Fuck you!” Levi snarled. The noise that came out of his through was so alien, so confusing to him, he didn't question if it was New Levi's or not. He just screamed. 

“What the fuck do you know!?”  
Crack.  
“How dare you!?”  
Crack. Crack. Crack.  
“Fuck YOU, You brat!, Crack. How Fucking Dare you?! Crack. You can't even fucking die?! Crack. Don't you dare pretend to know what I'm going through!”  
Crack, Crack, Crack, Crack, Crack.  
“Have you ever even lost some one, You sad piece of sh--”

 

“My Mother.” Eren managed. He didn't say it. He managed it, just barely. He could barely breathe at that point. It was enough to get Levi to stop for a second before the words properly sunk in. “I lost my mother.” He gasped out. 

The red dined away, and the Levi starred at Eren. Blooded and bruised and utterly wrecked. Utterly in pain. He was already healing. Levi sagged. Eren bent his knees in, and Levi leaned against them, starring at the boy underneath him. Thats how how he knew. Thats how Eren knew. Because he went through the same bullshit when he was younger. Shit. 

They didn't move for a what felt like a few hours. It might as well have been, there was no way to tell in the dungeon. Levi starred at him until Eren healed himself. When Eren was more or less okay to talk again he asked, “Do you want me to tell you about?”  
“No.” The man shook his head. Why was he so tired?  
“You bloodied your knuckles.” Eren said. Levi lifted both of his hands up to his face, and noticed that he cracked his own skin, while he was pounded the shit out of the kid. He wasn't happy to see it, and maybe that was a good thing. “Do you want to sleep?”  
“Yes.” Eren tried to get up, but Levi wouldn't budge. Eren gave him a week smile, reached up to his mattress to tug down the blankets and pillow. Levi had enough strength to role off of him, and onto the spot next to him on the blanket. The floor was freezing, and so was the wall. “Shit.” Eren smiled again, more persistently this time.  
“You haven’t said that in a week now.”  
“Stupid Brat. I could have killed you if you were human.” Eren seemed a little sad at that, but he turned to face his captain.  
“I knew you wouldn't. I trust you with everything. Ever since that day in court, I've trusted you.”  
“Thats a lot of blind faith.”  
“I know. Sometimes blind faith is what you need though.” They both stilled. Levi just starring at the kid. He had stupidly green blue eyes.  
“Eren?”  
“Hmm?”  
“Does it ever get better?”  
“A little bit. Eventually.”  
“How reassuring.”  
“I know.” Eren smiled at him. “Everything will work out. Promise.”  
“Sometimes blind faith is what you need, hugh?”  
'Yah. Sometimes.” Levi closed his eyes. 

It had been two weeks since his team mates died. Since his friends passed.

It had been two weeks since Erwin told him about it.

It had been a few minutes since he learned he could keep moving forward.

**Author's Note:**

> [iamalivenow](http://iamalivenow.tumblr.com/) is me on tumblr, come say hi, I'm nice, I swear. 
> 
> Comments always appreciated. 
> 
> If you make anything, please tag me in it! 
> 
> ✧*｡٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و✧*｡


End file.
